dammIT

A rantbox by Michiel Scholten

Coding in style && various bites


Thanks to Jure I'm currently listening to SomeFM's Secret Agent soundtrack while programming for a project. I really like their taste and the James Bond quotes they throw in for good measure.

Talking about style: I got a real appetite for these little chocolate planets. Aren't they - well - tasty looking? Another wannahave: a Pad charger:

Inside the pad, an array of coils spread a low-power magnetic field low and wide over the pad's flat surface so that devices anywhere on the surface can intercept charging flux (see Graphic). The pad has numerous flat primary coils embedded under the surface. The coils can be of different sizes and shapes: rectangular, circular or ellipsoid.

Splashpower-compatible cellphones, digital cameras or camcorders will have a thin, flat receiver attached to them or inside their casing. The receiver is a sheet of magnetic alloy, the size of a stick of chewing gum, with a coil wound round it. Current induced in the coil when it is on the charging pad is then fed to the device's charging circuit.

I've asked myself for quite some time why newspapers charge for yesterday's news. It totally ruins good links to interesting tidbits of news, because after [say] thirty days they are getting hidden behind a mandatory fee. I think it's just silly behaviour, and Cory Doctorow has some good points about it.

Cory has some interesting remarks about "inevitable" DRM too. Please go and read this blurp, because DRM isn't inevitable at all, and artists will get along without it too. Maybe even better than in the current situation where record labels and such get loads of money.

Also interesting is this '89 Apple Mac brochure with painting from The Simpsons' Matt Groening and the horrible grunt of a real Tasmanian Devil.

OK, that was enough procrastination for today. Please get along.